Regardless of my own opinions on the state of copyright/IP law in the US (I can't speak for the other countries listed in TFS), it is what it is. So I have to ask... What is Google's defense? It can't be the "public good" or "cultural preservation" play, because those have already been stabbed, short, burned, poisoned, beheaded, then drawn and quartered.

So what the hell are they claiming that's had the lawsuits lasting six frigging years?

While I think it's a good thing they're trying to do (though maybe not their motivations), I really thought they would have been bitchslapped down a long, long time ago. What cards are they holding here?

Their reasoning is probably a more fancy version of: it's only copyright violation when little people do it to a big corporation. When a big corporation wants to do it to an unknown author, that should be perfectly legal.

Fair use. The same way a person can reproduce short snippets of a copyrighted work without violating the copyright, Google Books allows you to search scanned books and view short sections of text at a time.

But Google themselves doesn't copy "short snippets," they copy everything. If they had license to copy everything, then making short snippets available might fall under fair use. But, those are two separate instances.

I fail to see how making snippets available makes the original copying fall under fair use.

Fair use. The same way a person can reproduce short snippets of a copyrighted work without violating the copyright, Google Books allows you to search scanned books and view short sections of text at a time.

However, they reproduced (for profit-making purposes) and are storing
the entire
content of books from which the snippets are displayed.

I've been called out by a librarian when she felt I was
copying "too much" from a book. Why does Google
get carte blanche to copy

And Google also provides these snippits for free.
They do not sell them.

So do pirates. Are you arguing that libraries, Google, and pirates should *all* be able to copy anything they like, and make it available as snippets? Pirates use bittorrent. The nature of the bittorrent protocol is to cut up a file into tiny snippets, and distribute each of the snippets separately, not necessarily to the same destination.

And Google also provides these snippits for free.They do not sell them.

That's ridiculous naive. Google is absolutely not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They are doing it because tracking what books people read from helps build a better "consumer profile" which they do sell for vast profits through adsense and other means (don't forget - they bought doubleclick).

I've been called out by a librarian when she felt I wascopying "too much" from a book. Why does Googleget carte blanche to copy millions of books in their entirety? At a minimum, shouldn'tGoogle at least have to purchase each book that they copied?

On October 28, 2008 the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced that they had settled Authors Guild v. Google. Google agreed to a $125 million payout, $45 million of that to be paid to rightsholders whose books were scanned without permission.

If a library owns a book, they have a right to scan it (or even to make a photocopy of a rare book for archival purposes). They have a right to use that scan within their building, or campus, to transmit to one other computer terminal at a time.

Google made a deal with the libraries. That's how they scanned the books. The libraries agreed to let Google distribute snippits. You can go into a library and photocopy several pages from a book.

So it's fair use if I go to the library and scan every book there. As long as I only share snippets it's somehow legal? Why do I feel like that would somehow not be how the courts would see it with an individual...

They're not distributing copies of books--they're doing searches and returning small snippets. The books are scanned, with the permission of their owners, only in order to allow those searches.

I would have thought first-sale rights would permit the owners of books to have their own copies scanned, and that fair use would permit Google to search them and return snippets.

None of this cuts into the publisher's traditional source of profits at all, as the publisher is still who a member of the public goes to to get a copy of the book.

If we really think copyright holders should have complete control over how every copy of their work is *used*, not only distributed, then they should have cut off the problem at the source and forbidden libraries....

They're not distributing copies of books--they're doing searches and returning small snippets. The books are scanned, with the permission of their owners, only in order to allow those searches.

Except... They're not returning snippets, they're often returning as much as half or more of the book. And they're not doing it without the authors or right's holders permission. So, you're pretty much wrong on both counts - and so is Google. They've kept the suits alive with a variety of

I would have thought first-sale rights would permit the owners of books to have their own copies scanned, and that fair use would permit Google to search them and return snippets.

First sale rights means that I am allowed to sell the copy of a book that I bought. First sale rights does not allow me to let you scan my copy of the book. If Google had bought the books to scan, then you might have a point, but they are scanning books that they do not own.

I compare what Google is doing to archaeology. In many cases, the rights holders of the books that they are copying do not give consent in the way that King Tut did not give consent to have his tomb opened and his treasures taken and displayed for profit.

The difference is that Kinko's was acting in a way that specifically, by intent and desire, reduced the sale of the books and journals in question. Google, on the other hand, is digitizing the books so that people can find them and buy them. Those two are entirely different acts.

What Google is doing is exactly the sort of thing copyright law is supposed to prevent. They are copying massive amounts of copyrighted works and using them for their own profit without permission from the copyright holders.

Sure, I love the idea of a computer search engine for books. And I can see how it could be very advantageous for an author to have their work on Google books. And I think that the term on copyright is far too long. Having said that, the courts should have put a stop to what Google is

The people behind the lawsuits are publishers and "authors guilds", organizations made obsolete by Google and electronic publishing. And they aren't suing over their own books (they could just have them removed), they are suing over the vast quantity of orphan works that they don't own but that would provide unwelcome free competition to their content.

They may only provide short excerpts, but they do copy the entire work without permission and they use the fact that you can search the entire work for their own profit. They are not trying to sell the authors books they are trying to use that database to entice more users for Google. Google has no right to profit off the authors works and the fact that Google is doing this strictly for profit pretty much negates fair-use. Opt-out is a poor excuse for getting permission.

Given that there are very few people like you and very few services like Google Books, opt-out is a reasonable default. Making opt-in the default because of a bunch of malcontent potty-mouths like you is unreasonable.

Google isn't "ignoring the law". The law is somewhat unclear about this situation, but Google has a good argument that it is fair use. And to the degree that there is anything to be settled, I'm saying it should "opt-out" rather than "opt-in".

Besides, the big publishers are big corporations themselves, and unlike Google, publishers are obsolete and have a long history of being totally evil.

What Google is doing is exactly the sort of thing copyright law is supposed to prevent. They are copying massive amounts of copyrighted works and using them for their own profit without permission from the copyright holders.

Copyright law isn't intended to prevent people from profiting from copyrighted works. If you publish a cookbook, I can use it to prepare meals and charge for them, for example. Copyright law gives copyright holders specific, limited rights in order to encourage them to publish and produce, nothing more. What Google is doing is no different from establishing a privately run reference service with a large staff that can look things up for you. They don't redistribute the works (unless the copyright holder gives them explicit permission).

With something this clear cut,

With something this clearcut, the court really should have kicked out authors and publishers as having no standing and no damages: any author or publisher who doesn't want to be on Google can just ask to be removed. What authors and publishers really want is to force Google to pay them no matter what. It's the usual rip-off of these groups of trying to get paid no matter what crap they produce.

The law very clearly states that unless you have a "yes" in writing, the answer is "no". All rights not specifically granted remain with the creator of the material. And as for "unknown"... says who? Just about every book out there has this little line saying "written by". There's your "unknown" right there. If Google can't contact the author, tough. If Google CLAIMS they can't contact the author (meaning, they never tried), tough. No signature, no permission.

All I want--far, far more than Netflix or Rhapsody--is to be able to give somebody money on a monthly basis to have access to nearly every book in every library in the world. Just somebody make this easy. I don't want to have to think, "Is reading a chapter of this obscure work on Russian formalism worth $0.50?" I just want to fucking click on a link, and read it.

I personally only right stuff that I am guaranteed to benefit from. Once I benefit from it, it is hard to argue that I wouldn't have done it in the first place if copyright did not exist. The only authors that have trouble are the ones that have been sold a song about how they can write a book and people will automatically buy it on its merits. Piracy has become the running cliche like lawyers. No one in jail is guilty it is just that their lawyer screwed them.

Seriously, people are working tooth and nail trying to get their content indexed on the world's biggest search engines so they can enjoy the extra visitors, but these idiot ass-backward authors can't wrap around their head that getting indexed is a good thing.

Google is fighting an uphill battle to make the authors richer in the long run? How idiotic. Someone slap some sense into these authors please.

Which I am not, but if I were an author, I would be THRILLED to find my book on googlebooks !!

Why?

Unless I am a very well known author, so well known that even people deep in the jungle in Africa or people from the hinterland of Siberia know me, there is NO WAY my book get to people in those places.

Getting my book scanned and placed online by google is a way to get my book to THE WORLD.

Profit loss?

No way.

As my book wouldn't be getting into the hands of people living in deep jungle in Africa or in the hands of people living in the frozen Siberia, I wouldn't be able to make money selling my books to those people in the first place.

BUT, as Google scanned my book and place it online, people all over, as long as they can get access to the Net, can, in theory, access my book.

It's the case of a blind dog attempting biting a hand which feeds it, because it can't see that the food doesn't magically appear, but has been delivered by the hand it can smell, and thus growls and snaps at.

I, also, would prefer as much visibility of any of my works as Google could provide. I've certainly bought several books because one search lead to another and suddenly I'm looking at a book I'd never have heard of, but contains some fascinating material relevent to my research. As a result I now have a highly comprehensive knowledge of various events in history and a library of books which overflows my shelves. Good thing these people are trying to fight it, I don't know where I'd put more books.:-\

You make a strong point for why an author should want their works on Google. But I think a better analogy might be that the authors are like a starving dog biting the hand of someone who is tying to tie it up and shove steaks down its gullet. Google is not offering the authors a (possibly beneficial) service; it is doing everything it can to force it upon them.

The fact remains that Google is scanning large numbers of books and posting them freely on the internet. And, while it may not be their only motive, they are doing it for their own profit.

Should massive digital libraries be allowed? Yes. However, this should be take care of by two things: For slightly old works, reasonable limits on copyright duration - thus allowing anyone to create such an index. For new works, the copyright holder should be able to offer their works as they see fit. And the idea that they should have to opt out of Google copying their work is insane (even if there is some appeal to the idea of the RIAA/MPAA having to opt out of people copying their works).

Er, well until there are reasonable limits on copyright duration—and fat chance of that happening any time soon given the massive corporate lobbying power behind making copyright infinitely long—attempts like Google's to work around the copyright lobby seem to be the only way to preserve the public interest. It's far more important to spread knowledge widely than preserve the illusory "rights" of dead authors for works written 75 years ago...

A solution that allows everybody to do this, rather than just Google, is of course superior. But there has to be something, and better just Google than nobody (other parties can of course make their own deals, or try to change the law, independent of what Google is doing). If you don't like that, then by all means press for a more universal solution—but the status quo is unacceptable.

It is trivial today for the creator of a manuscript -- an author -- to put his book online, on his own website/blog, at his own pace. Sell a chapter at a time? Give away chapters, or the whole thing? Interact with readers in his own blog forum during the writing process? Add a Facebook and/or Twitter component to the self-promotion? Link his writing work to his speaking work, or other creative and possibly more profitable endeavors? The possibilities are near-endless, and an entire cottage industry to assist and advise authors with marketing their e-books (circumventing traditional publishing houses) is emerging. It's a wonderful, liberating time!

So why in hell would an author give away control over any of that to Google? Fuck Google and fuck Google's Greed! A smart author will put his book (or parts of it) online, and buy the appropriate Google ad words and do all the other SEO bullshit that puts money into Google's pocket for delivering eyeballs to his site. Google is already making money from someone else's creative work -- and that's fine, I get that. But scanning a book without the author's or publisher's permission because -- why? -- it gives them something additional to turn up in search results once indexed, something new to hang ads on? Just wrong in Oh So Many Ways.

If I read a bunch of books that I own about a certain topic and someone later asks me question relating to that topic, is it illegal for me to answer that question by citing information I have read?

If a company scans a bunch of books it has legal access to about a certain topic and a user asks the company a question relating to that topic, is it illegal for the company to answer that qustion by citing information from the book?

If a company scans a bunch of books it has legal access to about a certain topic and a user asks the company a question relating to that topic, is it illegal for the company to answer that qustion by citing information from the book?

If you read a book, memorize it, and then quote the entire thing in public, you may very well be breaking copyright law. You will have to see if your particular citation falls under fair use, but there are laws governing public performance of copyrighted works.

It's the publishers and "guilds" that see their monopoly profits fade away as they are being cut out of the business. In fact, any publisher and author who doesn't want to be on Google Books can simply notify Google and they'll remove their content. Their claims that they are protecting the authors are bullshit. What they really want is to stay in control of the publishing business. They also don't want free content and orphan works to appear because that would be unwelcome competition.

Publishers and "guilds" have conned some authors into supporting them; but any author with half a brain quickly figures out that Amazon, Google Books, and the e-book revolution are good for them.

They put a big honking COPYRIGHT NOTICE at the front of their books, it says "Do NOT Copy without written permission in ADVANCE". Anyone (including google) who makes a copy of the entire book is brazenly violating the posted copyright notice!

What you can and cannot do with a book is determined by copyright, not by those notices. Publishers have a habit of lying about what rights they do and do not have to the content they publish. I think anybody who claims more rights to their works than they actually have under the law should automatically lose all rights.

and if we pay for it and realise it wasn't worth what we paid - because the worth cannot be determined without access to the content, can we get a refund?
If I go to the library to read your book, will you get mad at the library for taking your profits?

Its also my understanding that Google isn't in the business of providing unfetted access to the entirety of the books it digitises, only small parts thereof.
If people could easily determine if a book was not worth purshasing, consumers risk is lower and au

Look, google isn't distributing copies of these books. They're searching for terms in them and returning snippets. That doesn't compete in the least with the business of people that are selling the entire book.

"there is nothing good about what Google is doing, except to the very short sighted."

They're providing an unprecedented and extremely useful service: the ability to perform full-text searches of entire multiple libraries' worth of books in fractions of a second from anywhere in the world.

If we require opt-in, then the immense number of rights owners involved is likely to make building such a service impractical.

We could be having the same argument about libraries: why shouldn't copyright owners be consulted about whether they want their books loaned out?

Fortunately the drafters of the copright law produced something flexible enough to provide incentives to authors while still allowing for services such as libraries. Flexible enough, even, to accommodate services like Google's that didn't exist at the time--fair use and first-sale rights provide all the basis the courts would need to find Google well within the rule of law, and I very much hope that's what happens.

You have no right to full-text searches of books. Yea, it's great. Awesome, really. It helps a ton with research of all kinds, or just finding that quote in a particular book or set of books, but this is something that should most likely be part of a licensed database. People pay good money for access to databases to search published journals. This is of the same class.

You have no right to full-text searches of books. Yea, it's great. Awesome, really. It helps a ton with research of all kinds, or just finding that quote in a particular book or set of books, but this is something that should most likely be part of a licensed database. People pay good money for access to databases to search published journals. This is of the same class.

Why? Published journals are a somewhat different class, since the original author isn't going to get money if the searcher buys the journal (generally). A book, on the other hand, they will.

And just because people pay money for it doesn't mean that is how it should be, either.

So because you choose to have Google profit from your work, you declare everyone else must have the choice taken away from them?

Nobody is taking your choice away; if you don't want your books on Google, just tell them. Furthermore, just because you own a copyright doesn't mean other people can't profit from your content without paying you. Copyright doesn't give you exclusive rights to any possible use of your works, it only gives you a specific, limited monopoly.

I shan't speak in defence of copyright or "intellectual property" but I shall speak in defence of rule of law.

Yes, so shall I: the rule of law in the US includes fair use and the public domain. "Authors guilds" and publishers have been trying to subvert the rule of law for decades by trying to carve out ever increasing special privileges. By default, Google makes books searchable and publishes snippets that is fair use.

You and the publishers want to steal from the public and from companies like Google, by deriving profit from fair use activities and content you don't even own. It is high time that the rule of law puts a stop to people like you.

What we have to admit here is that Google is a massively wealthy company, and that authors are, in general, poor as shit.

How anyone can call this 'fair' is bizarre. Authors own their property, just like you own your toothbrush or your socks. Google comes in and makes money off of this property, without asking, in violation of the rule of law and the custom of law.

If it were Fair, google and all its highly payed, perks-out-the-ass employees would be giving a little sumpin sumpin to the Philip K Dicks of the

And, if, for some reason, your book slipped through the cracks, you can have it removed.

But what you and the publishers really want is to force Google to promote your books and then pay for the privilege. And you want to make it so cumbersome for small authors and publishers to get onto services like Google that you retain a monopoly. I don't think so.

What we have to admit here is that Google is a massively wealthy company, and that authors are, in general, poor as shit.

The reason authors are "poor as shit" is simple supply and demand: there is a glut of authors and books. The world doesn't owe you a living as an author. If you can't make it as an author under the existing copyright law, which is already very strict, choose a different profession or get a day job to pay the bills.

Authors own their property, just like you own your toothbrush or your socks.

Copyright is a temporary, limited grant by the government. It is nothing like physical property. Read the Constitution.

Google comes in and makes money off of this property, without asking, in violation of the rule of law and the custom of law.

There is nothing in copyright law that generally prohibits others from profiting from your writings; such a notion is contrary to the very idea of copyright laws. Your rights in your copyrighted materials are limited.

There are countless scandals and corruption episodes going on right now that we will never know about because there are no journalists being payed to report on them.

Same thing applies to journalists as to authors: either there is a demand for their services or there is not, either they can make a living at it or they can't. Because of the Internet, it turns out that we need far fewer journalists than we used to, so a lot of them lose their jobs. I don't see a problem.

The publishers are often horrible, but Google is just another publisher - the funny thing is that it doesnt really pay anyone to write anything, and there is only one of it (i.e. its a monopoly).

Google has spent billions on creating free software. That alone more than makes up for any moral quibbles you may have with them.

Authors have EVERYTHING to do with this, fool. The Author's Guild has been fighting this since day one.

Sorry, but you can't cry and whine that it's the E-E-E-E-E-VILLLL *IAA's/licensed distributors (who only rip-off the poor artists anyway) who are leading the fight against piracy this time. The authors are on the front line -- have been since the day Harlan Ellison first sued AOL [benedict.com] back in the 90's

Where, in any of the legitimate arguments against Google, is there the suggestion that Google wishes to withhold money from or steal content from authors with a claim to profits generated from the sale of their content?

Additionally, where is the claim that Google plans on making available copyrighted material for which an author is known and interested in claiming their legitimate profit?

Where, in any of the legitimate arguments against Google, is there the suggestion that Google wishes to withhold money from or steal content from authors with a claim to profits generated from the sale of their content?

Additionally, where is the claim that Google plans on making available copyrighted material for which an author is known and interested in claiming their legitimate profit?

This!

However, I doubt you will make any headway with these people who are convinced that this is blatant copyright violation on a grand scale. Their mind is closed on the subject.

At issue is a tiny TINY number of Unknown Authors who in most cases are dead, leaving no known heirs, who published something after 1923, but which is now out of print. Abandoned works by and large. Google does not violate copyrights, and uses the power of their own search engine to find these authors.

But every time this story comes up, the same google haters jump up and scream copyright infringement.

Under what claim does Google to get fair use. Just because they offer a few pages does not make it fair-use.

17 U.S.C. 107Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. 106 and 17 U.S.C. 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of

Google compensated the copyright holders too.On October 28, 2008 the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced that they had settled Authors Guild v. Google. Google agreed to a $125 million payout, $45 million of that to be paid to rightsholders whose books were scanned without permission.

They do so only within the exemptions for fair use as provided in the copyright law.And a word to each person can hardly be considered distribution of a book. Each person walks away with essentially Nothing.

Wrong. The entire book is scanned. The filtration is done at presentation time; the entire work is digitized. I know this because Google tried to do this with my book. They also lied about trying to contact me for permission; I received no such contact even though my contact information had not changed in years, and the publisher is still in business at the same contact points listed in the book itself. Needless to say, when I found out about this I cease-and-desisted Google. My work is not theirs to give away.

The lawsuit notes they they are scanning the entire work, without permission, with intent to provide the entire work to libraries in addition to presenting excerpts to anyone. The lawsuit also asserts that the usage is NOT "fair use". Kinko's Copies used to photocopy portions of textbooks selected by professors, assemble those chapters into custom textbooks per the professor's specifications, and sell them; they too claimed "fair use". Kinko's had their heads handed to them in court, which forced them to greatly diminish their campus income and started a slide into non-profitability that led to the FedEx buyout. (I managed a campus-facing Kinko's in the late 80's; I saw it all firsthand) The only differences are that with Kinko's, the copied material was presented in physical form, and that the financial benefit for the infringement was immediate (a retail sale) as opposed to diffuse (advertising data collection and presentation). The Kinko's case [jrank.org] is being cited by the plaintiffs as precedent.

The lawsuit also states that Google is exposing the authors to the risk of having all of their works compromised at once. If someone breaks into Google's storage system, they can get every book Google has ever come into contact with. The pirates won't have to do the scanning and OCR work; Google will have already removed that hurdle. This is a risk which Google has imposed upon authors without consent; it's another example of Google not giving a damn about what authors want, and assuming rights and powers which they have no legal or ethical claim to.

The other issue is that libraries want to scan their collections for use within their own building, so they can send disintegrating books to cold storage or throw them out. It's sort of like making a backup. But the Author's Guild doesn't want to let them do that either.

The libraries want to be able to send images of the pages of their books to their patrons, rather than bringing up the physical book.

That seems reasonable.

Here's a real problem: I was at the New York Public Library's performing arts library in Lincoln Center. The librarian explained that they have collections of folders of clippings about all kinds of theater topics, such as theaters. These clippings contain information that's available noplace else. They don't have a good index, and the only way to find out what's in the folders is to get them from the stacks. The newspaper clippings are printed on newsprint, which is disintegrating.

They want to image the whole collection, so patrons of the library can sit at a terminal and view images of the folders, rather than have to send them up from the stacks in elevators and read through the disintegrating clippings. They're waiting for the resolution of the Google suit before they can go ahead. If the Authors' Guild wins, they won't be able to image their own collection, and they'll have to watch it turn to dust.

A lot of this stuff has the problem of orphan works. It would be almost impossible to digitize it if you needed permission from the copyright holder (which is not necessarily the author).

A folder might contain articles, such as reviews, from a dozen different publications. Some of them might not be in existence any more. If the reviewer was an employee of the publication, the copyright belongs to the publication. If the reviewer was a freelancer, it probably belongs to the freelancer or his estate -- but that depends on long-lost contracts. There are people who track these copyrights down when publishers want to reprint things in textbooks -- it might cost $10 or $100 per article to track down the current owner, and sometimes you can't find them at all. Sometimes it's still in copyright, but they can't figure out, without a lawsuit, exactly who owns the rights (like that Philip K. Dick story, The Adjustment Bureau).

I think it's a social good to have these disintegrating files imaged. I think it's fair use. The Author's Guild doesn't think so, and if they get their way, these folders will turn to dust.

BTW, I also make my living as a published author. But I've spent days searching through paper copies of old books and microfilm, and I've always dreamed of being about to search for it by computer.

"Silence gives consent" is how all search engines operate on the net
(*). It's a core value of Google without which it could not have
existed as a successful company.

The problem here is that Google's mission
is supposedly to index all the world's information, but when that information
doesn't naturally live on the net, the core values are incompatible. Hence
the clash with books (copyright issues) and the clash with street view (privacy issues), and there will be clashes in every other area of life where

You are talking about legalities not "evil". Monkeys stringing words together (I'm being generous--the normal authorship process is far less original) and staking claim to them out of pure meanness for as long as we shall live is what evil looks like.